Woodard Family Rural Historic District

Four farmhouses and their outbuildings make up this rural district of roughly 550 acres in eastern Wilson County, North Carolina, set in the fork of Toisnot Swamp and White Oak Swamp along Rt. 264. William Woodard, a prosperous farmer, began acquiring the land in 1823. His c. 1832 Federal plantation house is the oldest dwelling. Later houses include two mid-nineteenth century vernacular and Greek Revival farmhouses and a Colonial Revival residence remodeled in 1911 from a modest earlier home. Frame packhouses, smokehouses, tobacco barns and tenant houses survive nearby. The district matters because three generations of farmhouses built by one family remain on land still used for farming. It reflects the prosperity of the area from the plantation era through the flue-cured tobacco boom. Its owners included Baptist preachers, deacons and local businessmen. Twenty-nine dwellings and farm buildings contribute to the district.